---
title: On she sailed past several towns, and the little birds sitting in th… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: On she sailed past several towns, and the little birds sitting in the bushes saw her, and sang, ‘What a pretty little girl!’ Who acts: leaf, little birds. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every claus
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/47/106/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), sentence 106

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On she sailed past several towns, and the little birds sitting in the bushes saw her, and sang, ‘What a pretty little girl!’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** leaf, little birds · **What happens:** sail, sit, see, sing, girl · **To what, where:** several towns, bushes, leaf

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (leaf, little birds), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg640:47:106
# text = On she sailed past several towns, and the little birds sitting in the bushes saw her, and sang, ‘What a pretty little girl!’
1	On	on	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	sailed	sail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	past	past	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	towns	town	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
12	sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	bushes	bush	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obl	_	_
16	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
17	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
22	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	27	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	27	nsubj	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
25	pretty	pretty	ADV	RB	_	26	advmod	_	_
26	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	girl	girl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	27	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sail** | past | leaf |  |  | several towns |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent past town=Trajectory |
| 2 | **sit** | gerund | the little birds *not said here* |  |  | the bushes |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in bush=Location |
| 3 | **see** | past | the little birds | leaf |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer she=Stimulus |
| 4 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | leaf *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **girl** |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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